He finds it and sits down with two tumblers, a radio on in the background playing country music. I pour the wine and we toast the weekend, glasses clinking over the table. A car drives past outside, close to the house at a crawl, and I think that it might be about to stop on the drive when it suddenly moves away.
We talk for perhaps an hour, and it surprises me how easily I disguise my apprehension from him. I am thinking always of the consequences of telling Saul about JUSTIFY, of asking him to release details to the press and on the Internet should anything happen to me. But I can stay focused on what he is saying. Any thoughts I might have about the timing of a confession exist only as an undercurrent to the conversation.
Saul is preoccupied by his work, thinking of chucking his job and going into finance. He says, “After university, we all went into television for the glamour. I thought TV would provide some outlet for self-expression, but a lot of the time it’s just tedious and vain, full of guys with goatee beards wearing Armani suits. I need to make some money. ”
I don’t try to sway him one way or the other. I simply hear him out. It is the longest and most fulfilling conversation we have had in over eighteen months, just the two of us talking into the night. All the time I am conscious of a thawing in Saul’s attitude toward me, the gradual reconciliation of a ten-year friendship that had been allowed to fester and grow stale. The old-established ties were always there: they simply needed to be rekindled.
When both of us are slightly drunk and, although not tired, starting to think about going to bed, Saul’s mobile phone goes off. It is still packed inside his overnight bag on the kitchen floor, the ring muffled by clothes.
“Who the fuck’s that?” I ask, looking at the clock on the wall. It is half past three in the morning.
“Probably Mia,” he says, getting up out of his chair and struggling to retrieve the phone. “She always calls late. Doesn’t sleep.”
But it is not Mia.
The signal is bad, and Saul has to go outside to take the call. When he comes back into the kitchen, he tells me that Kate and her boyfriend have been killed in a car accident. He tells me quickly and without inflection, the news of her death first, then the place where the crash took place, and the name of the boyfriend. William.
He says that he is so sorry.
I cannot stay in the room with him. I do not even ask a question. I am outside, through the open door, and stumbling on gravel, his voice behind me just a single word: “Alec.”
There is no feeling in me but rage. No sadness or pain, just a sense of powerless anger, like punching air. I turn and am conscious of Saul, standing in the doorway, his head absolutely dropped, not knowing what to do or say. She was his friend, too.
And the boyfriend. He got caught up in it, and they took him as well. His life meant nothing to them.
“Who was driving?” I ask, and, at first, Saul does not hear me. I have to repeat the question, my voice louder.
“Who was driving?”
“I don’t know,” he replies, and he uses this as an opportunity to come toward me, out onto the drive. “It was Hesther who telephoned. She had to tell her parents. That’s where she was calling from. Said they were at a party or something. Coming back. That’s all she said.”
“No other cars? No drunk driver or…”
“Alec, I don’t know. She didn’t say. Do you want to go back to London? What do you want to do?”
When you are with somebody, when you love them, you think about their loss, what it would mean to suffer their dying. I thought of this always with Kate: illness, accident-even a car crash. Her going off on a journey and simply never coming home. I was aware that these fears contained an element of expectation, perhaps even of hope that something might happen to her. Why? Because that would make people sympathetic toward me; it would give my life a certain drama. To lose your first love. It had the character of tragedy.
There is nothing of that now. Only the hideous noise of impact, an inhuman sound. And Kate’s eyes at this moment. I see Kate’s eyes.
How did they do it? Brakes? Tires? Were they forced off the road? What person has it in him to order the deaths of two young people?
“What happened?” I ask Saul. “How did it happen?”
“I really don’t know. We should go back,” he says. “Maybe sleep and then go back to London.”
I agree with him, without thinking it through, looking directly at him for the first time. We just stand there, saying nothing, and Kate is dead and Saul does not know why.
And now the first doubts come, the first ugly glimpses of self-interest. I realize that I am not safe-that Saul is not safe-not here or in London, not anywhere now that this has happened. They will find us and, without hesitation, move again.
He is offering me a cigarette, already lit, and I take it.
“Let’s get in,” he says.
“Yes.”
In the house, things move slowly. Saul is quiet and still, sitting at the kitchen table, knowing that there is nothing he can say. I move about the room, boiling a kettle, making tea. I find that it helps me not to stay in one place. Occasionally he will speak-a question, some expression of his concern-but I barely respond. I can say nothing of what I am really feeling, for the simple reason that it is inexpressible without resorting to the truth.
With the clock at five thirty I suggest to Saul that he go upstairs and get some sleep. He agrees and turns at the door and asks me twice if I will be all right. I nod, manage a smile, even, and say that I will wake him in a few hours.
“I probably won’t sleep,” he says.
As soon as he has gone upstairs, I go out onto the gravel drive and walk along the main road, heading downhill in the direction of the sea. The color of night has shifted to a deep blue, which makes it easier to spot the telephone box on the first corner leading into Padstow.
The door to the booth opens heavily. I struggle with it, weakened by the hopeless knowledge that this is all that I have left. Three phone calls.
I put a pound coin in the slot and dial Katharine’s number.
It connects immediately, but there is only a rising three-note message where her voice used to be.
The number you have dialed has not been recognized. Please check and try again.
I press Redial, forcibly with the point of my thumb.
The number you have dialed has not been recognized. Please check and try again.
She has gone, on a plane to join Fortner in the States. The man who is not even her husband. Their work is done.
I try Hawkes.
Nothing. A busy signal both at his house in the country and at the flat in London. Both lines busy at a quarter to six on a Saturday morning. If he is here, he knows about Kate. He knows that I want to talk to him. They are all of them cowards.
I have one final chance.
The number rings and I hold on, for twenty or thirty seconds, waiting. Then, finally, a woman’s voice, tired and suspicious, says, “Two-seven-eight-five.”
“I want to speak to John Lithiby. This is Alec Milius.”
She buys time.
“Who?”
“This is Alec Milius. Put me through to John Lithiby.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir. Mr. Lithiby will not be available until Monday morning.”
“Then give me his home number.”
“You can understand that-”
“I don’t give a fuck about what I can understand or what kind of policy you’ve been told to follow. Just tell him that Kate is dead. Tell him that Kate Allardyce is dead. They killed her, and they will kill me unless-”
“Dead?” she says, as if she has heard of Kate, as if she knows who Kate is.
“That’s right. In a car crash. Tell him this. Get him to ring me. Tell him that if he doesn’t contact me, I will
